Good morning, folks! How are we all doing today?

I’ve just edited 7132 on Penal Earth 2 in about 50 minutes. This is my LAST pass through before it goes to my beta reader. Most of the edits I had to make in this first sitting were grammar related, the odd sentence tightening. Overall those first 7k words were pretty tidy, as they should be as I’ve worked quite hard on this one so far. I wished I could write a solid first or second draft, but I’m either not that type of writer or I’m a ways off getting to that sort of level when it comes to my ability to wrangle words.

On Lovers I have made some solid progress this month despite not having a lot of time. I’ve had my daughter quite a bit this month (which has been awesome!), but when I have her writing is way down my to-do list for a day. Mostly it’s been during breaks at work, or before work if I’ve got in early. This type of writing always feels like snatching words. It’s a few hundred here and there, but when you’re writing a those small chunks of words fairly consistently (only four zero word days this month), you end up with a lot of words out of those small snippets of time. Although I have no idea how long Lovers will end up being I’m past the point where it’s been a short story and will likely end up being in the novella range. I’ve got the core of the story, I now need to build on the scenes I’ve written and connect them together. I’m seeing the way I can do this now, which is quite exciting. This story had its first seed sewn maybe fifteen years ago, if not a touch longer, but I’ve never felt ready to write it. I’ve also never really known how to put it together. I did have an original draft done and duster, but it never felt right and what I’ve got now feels natural. I have no timeline for a draft being complete, but it feels like something special.

Right, I’m off to start some garden work. I’ve a shed to tidy and a pond filter to clean. Thankfully it’s dry today and not sunshine and showers like yesterday. I can feel Autumn coming though, which makes me happy. It’s my favourite time of the year and I’m looking forward to it.

Right, have an awesome day and weekend, folks!

You can find my work on Amazon:

And I have a Ko-Fi account here: